Brief Periods Of Solitude

I usually don’t write over the weekends. I discovered the reason while I was on vacation with my family at Dewey Beach.

I need solitude to write.

I don’t necessarily need to be sequestered in a room by myself with the doors locked and everyone away from me.

What I have learned is that I need to be in a situation where I can shut off everyone around me.

Now that’s not difficult to do when I am surrounded by people other than my family.

When we went on vacation last year to Dewey Beach I made sure to take all my writing books and pens. I thought that just sitting on the beach staring out at the ocean would be the perfect time and place for writing.

What I didn’t think about was that I would always have someone from my family with me. Of course I love my family and want to be with them so let me explain why it was a road block to my writing.

Even though I don’t think anyone in my family expected my undivided attention every second of every minute as we sat there in the warm sun, I couldn’t focus on writing. I felt guilty. I felt if I’m focusing on my writing then I’m ignoring them and here we are on a family vacation. Who knows how many more of these we will have together.

So having these feelings of guilt it becomes impossible to write anything.

And by write I mean writing from the heart. Where the words be they good or bad, significant or trivial flow uninterrupted.

I felt so guilty about ignoring them that I couldn’t even put on my headphones and listen to music.

You sit there with your headphones on and see them looking at you and you feel like once again you’re ignoring your family. So you turn off the iPhone, take out the ear buds and devote your time to your family.

I guess I need to take a personal vacation. It doesn’t have to be a vacation where I leave the house, but a vacation dedicated to creating without interruption or guilt.

Well it may need to be away from the house. Something always comes up that needs to be done no matter how much you plan. Maybe I need to send the family away, each on their own private vacation. Nope that’s too expensive.

Maybe I just need to be more effective and efficient with the brief periods of solitude when they are presented to me.